1. Field of the Invention
The preseent invention relates generally to a toy configured for being tossed along the surface of a body of water such as a swimming pool or the ocean. The invention relates more specifically to a water skipping toy that is safe to use, inexpensive to produce and readily manufactured from only three simple parts.
2. Background Art
There are a surprising number of prior art U.S. patents which relate to water skipping toys. These patents are variously entitled “Saucer-Shaped Water Skipping Devices” (U.S. Pat. No. 5,679,082); “Skimming Disk” (U.S. Pat. No. 6,383,052); “Hydrodynamic Throwing Device” (U.S. Pat. No. 6,241,570); and “Hydroplaning Disk” (U.S. Pat. No. 5,836,840). All of these prior toy designs are generally similar. They are disk or saucer-shaped devices designed to be tossed or thrown generally parallel to the surface of water against which they tend to bounce or skip one or more times until they come to a floating rest on the water surface. Some of these prior art water skipping toys are relatively exotic with special gripping perimeters and materials to optimize their aerodynamic and hydrodynamic performance. However, such devices are more costly to manufacture thereby making them too expensive to be commercially successful as a relatively simple toy concept; i.e., throw it and see it skip along the water surface. Even the more simple prior art skipping toys are not configured for modern low cost manufacturing. They are typically not configured for injection molding or easy assembly with minimal hands-on labor. They employ too many parts and too many specially shaped components which require more expensive tooling and assembly.
Accordingly, it would be highly desirable to have a water skipping toy which had the advantages of being simple in design and of few parts that are easily manufactured and assemblied so that the toy is low cost at the retail level and thus more accessible to the marketplace.